“Death wouldn’t do that to Jack. He has honor. Face it, Vincent, you’re going to have to accept that some cards are good. . . .” My gaze slid back to the blood pool. To the Violet creature emerging.
The memory of my past with the Lovers fluttered so close to the surface. I recalled hills of roses, with thorns as big as daggers, and Violet’s blood dripping from a height. I’d caught it in my cupped hands like rain.
Why had she been raised above me?
I gasped as the full scene hit me. The room seemed to shrink down on me, my lungs contracting. I’d bound Violet in vine, trapping her to . . . the blade of a windmill, the fabric-covered sail. Her blood had saturated the white material, dripping down for me to catch.
The structure had groaned under the weight of rose stalks, the Lovers’ lands invaded by them. By me.
I’d ordered vines to burrow under her skin—while keeping her alive. As she’d spun round and round, her agonized screams had carried.
She’d looked younger than I was now. My stomach pitched.
The Army grinds on, a windmill spins. I’d believed Matthew had been warning me of the Azey’s approach.
Oh, he had been—just not in the way I’d thought.
I’d kept Violet trapped like that for days. Until Vincent had come for her, sacrificing himself.
Come, join her, pay the price. There is no shame in surrender, Lover. I’d parted those thorns, calling him closer. How artfully we beckon. How perfectly we punish.
I’d sliced him to ribbons. I’d choked them both in vine. I’d clawed out their eyes and seeded sprouts in the sockets.
The twins hadn’t necessarily been monsters in that life, but I had been, as evil as an invoked red witch.
And Aric wanted me to give her free rein? How could I say I knew Death—when I didn’t even know myself?
“You’re remembering!” Vincent blinked to clear his eyes. “At least you kept your promise to dispatch us together. But then you desecrated our remains. When my line’s chroniclers found us, your hideous roses were flourishing inside our bodies!”
My breaths shallowed until I was on the verge of hyperventilating. Once I got us free of this place, I would take my memories like penance. For now, I had to help Selena.
Vincent said, “In this life, Vi and I will never be parted—never again.”
Then where in this h.e.l.lhole was she?
His eyes flared once more. “We’ve decided one of your lovers should die today. And it should be your choice. The Reaper? Or the hunter?”
I shook my head hard. “You can’t make me choose.”
“Then we’ll decide for you.” He tapped his chin. “The hunter will fall. Our carnates turn on him now.”
Aric! Help Jack, please!
—A merry chase, wife.—
Had Selena stiffened? The desperate need to protect Jack filled me; was she feeling it too? Enough to shake this daze?
If anything could break through to her . . .
For Jack, Selena Lua could do anything.
In a taunting tone, Vincent said, “My children never make clean kills. The thieving hunter is about to die—badly.”
Okay, Selena had definitely twitched.
When Vincent grew distracted—between creating a clone and communing with the ones fighting—I whispered to her, “J.D. is in danger, Selena. Do you think he knows why you don’t have his six?” My G.o.d, I was sick. “All your strength and speed, just sitting on the bench while he’s under attack.”
Beneath that collar, her pulse point fluttered faster.
“What are you saying to her?” Vincent blinked rapidly.
“Um, your carnate needs you.” I pointed at the pool beside Selena. Both of the clone’s arms had risen, the top of a head crowning. Like a toddler, the creature repeatedly grasped at air, as if wanting to be picked up.
“Follow my voice,” he crooned to the thing as he knelt at the edge of the pool—
WHAM.
In a spray of blood, Selena had s.n.a.t.c.hed her nailed hand free then whipped her straightened arm out at Vincent. The line of her tensed limb connected with his throat.
His head snapped back. Lolled at an odd angle. His body collapsed backward.
Selena had awakened to break Vincent’s neck—with one strike.
“The sensor!” I dove for it, but he’d dropped it into the blood beside the now sinking carnate. “Selena!” I twisted around to claw her collar off.
“It’s okay,” she murmured.
“NOT okay!” I wrenched the piece off her neck, throwing it away.
She turned toward me. “I saw . . . his thumb slip . . . nothing happened. The sensor for the collar is broken, has been broken.” Without warning, she lunged at me.
“Selena, wait!”
“Evie!” she cried, hugging me tight. “You came for me.”
“Oh! Um, you’re going to be all right,” I a.s.sured her as I stroked her tangled hair. “But we have to take Violet out too.”
Selena pointed at Vincent. “Look at him.”
He sprawled on his back, his pale glazed eyes fixed on the ceiling. His shirt had shifted to reveal a weird tattoo on his chest.
“He has his own brand,” she added.
“I don’t understand. Let me go look.” I pried myself free from her, then took a step closer to him—
“AH!” I scrambled back, slipping in the blood, arms pinwheeling as I busted my a.s.s. Below Vincent’s collarbone, right over his heart, a wide-open eye stared at me.
Pale blue. Like a dead fish’s.
“Oh, my G.o.d! What is that?” Never taking my gaze off it, I managed to turn over on my knees. When the eye blinked, I stifled a shriek. Real? Unreal?
“That is Violet,” Selena bit out. “He told me he loved her so much, he took her into him before they were ever born. So the Empress could never separate them again.”
Vincent had absorbed his twin in the womb. His sister had never been a . . . person.
Matthew’s words: The twins—inseparable. Never parted. “B-but Vincent talked like she existed. The general did.”
“Because they were crazy!”
No wonder Matthew had been confused. No wonder the twins had never used their most potent powers. They couldn’t whisper together or clasp hands and swing arms.
The eye darted. Right. Left. Then it stilled, wide open, as glazed as her brother’s.
Violet was dead.
I couldn’t breathe, was ready to lose it, but as Matthew had told me, we weren’t out of the woods yet. “Selena, I’ll be right back. Getting your clothes. Okay?” I stumbled to the outer door. Combination-locked. Could Death break it down?